


An Interventionist

by DoreyG



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (Good GOD no), But some underage intimacy, Character Study, Hannibal is seventeen and Will is fourteen, Hunger Games AU, Hunger Games Fusion, M/M, Mentions of Major Character Death, Mentions of graphic violence, No Sex, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows how Jack, the male tribute from district 1, has a sick girlfriend at home that he’s desperate to see again. He knows how Abigail, the tiny female tribute from district 7, has a dark past behind her and blood already under her fingernails. He knows how Alana, his fellow tribute from district 4 and only ‘friend’, screams silently into her pillow at night so nobody else hears. He <i>knows</i>-</p>
<p>…He knows Hannibal.</p>
<p>And Hannibal knows him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Interventionist

Hannibal Lecter is the male tribute from district 2. He’s seventeen, tall and muscular. He smiles like a blade and his every word is perfect, rehearsed even when spontaneous. He trains in private, keeping his secrets to himself, but still seems to get along well with most of the other tributes. He is charming, urbane, handsome. He should be the favourite.

…But he is not.

Will Graham is the male tribute from district 4 this year. He’s fourteen, small and as slender as a grain of wheat. The fish smell has largely been scrubbed from his skin, but he still hears the ocean whispering and is practically mute because of it. He trains with the other tributes, every single day for as long as he can, but is never seen. He is shy, awkward, a lamb to the slaughter. He should be marked down as one of the first to perish.

…But he _knows_ things.

He knows that he is not strong, nor cunning as a whip, nor particularly brave. He knows that he should be one of the first to die, and does not particularly care. His mother left when he was a baby, his father responded by making the ocean his mistress – he has little incentive to keep going under the weight of his silent skill. He knows the souls of women and men, and he _sickens_ of it. He knows how Jack, the male tribute from district 1, has a sick girlfriend at home that he’s desperate to see again. He knows how Abigail, the tiny female tribute from district 7, has a dark past behind her and blood already under her fingernails. He knows how Alana, his fellow tribute from district 4 and only ‘friend’, screams silently into her pillow at night so nobody else hears. He _knows_ -

…He knows Hannibal.

And Hannibal knows him.

They meet one night, a few nights before the interviews that he is silently dreading. He’s been training late, trying to forget the doubtless nightmare of them. He knows, _knows_ , that he’ll get out onto that stage and glance out at the sea of the faces and see- _See_ \- Everything. Every secret, every lie, every delusion that humanity needs to protect itself. He’ll see who has been on the drugs, who has been sneaking out to have sex with their pretty secretary while their wife waits at home with the new baby, who has secretly experienced horror at the sheer concept of the games, who, who, _who_.

Hannibal steps from the shadows as he’s towelling his shoulders off. They wait for a long few moments, caught in an oddly polite impasse, before the boy clears his throat and he allows his head to turn, “Will.”

He blinks in surprise at the shortening of his name. He is Will to most at home, where the salt wind blows every day and people are too busy surviving to mind a little bit of oddness, but only Alana knows that. She attempts to be friendly with most of the other tributes, but he very much doubts that she’s on that level of intimacy with Hannibal. There’s something disquieting about him – something strange, and outside, and like nails being drawn slowly down a blackboard “…Lecter.”

They are at an impasse again, still with a thin veneer of politeness. They study each other with interest, eyes flying over hair and clothes and general style. He gets from Hannibal largely what he already knows – sophisticated, relaxed, with a hint of darkness that he just can’t shake. He can’t tell what Hannibal thinks in return.

…And perhaps that’s a little of what unsettles him.

The silence stretches and eventually he can take it no longer. He shifts his gaze, drops it from where he was staring pointedly at Hannibal’s ear right down to the concrete ground at their feet, “what do you want?”

It’s brusque, impolite at best, but Hannibal doesn’t seem to mind much. It’s odd, really, since the only displays of emotion that the other boy has shown up ‘til now is when one of the other tributes has forgotten all their manners in a flash of terror – but he’ll most certainly take it, “you could win these games.”

…In a puzzled way, yes. But he’ll take it nonetheless. Shift slightly on the balls of his feet, stare at the floor in confusion as Hannibal smiles politely, “I really couldn’t.”

“You underestimate yourself, Will.”

“I really don’t, and- how do you even know my name, anyway?”

Hannibal smiles again, a slight flicker, and steps closer into the light. He should mind, he should be scurrying back and avoiding the slightest risk of contact as he so often does, but he finds himself curiously devoid of care. He does not, it strikes him suddenly like a slap across the face, register Hannibal as entirely _human_ , “I have been watching you. I must confess, I have found your skills… Fascinating.”

He barks out short laughter, still remains in place. He, it strikes him suddenly again, is more fascinated than terrified by his realization – aware that Hannibal is bad, but unwilling to move away until the poison has fully penetrated into his veins, “I have no _skills_. What am I, a simple fisherman’s son? I don’t know how to poison a person, how to gut a person, how to _kill_ a person. When you come charging at me, in the arena like you’re _supposed_ to, I’m going to die in five seconds.”

“Perhaps,” Hannibal accepts this with a shrug, like anybody standing against him is automatically doomed to die, “but if anybody else comes ‘charging at you’ you will not. You, I think, will live until the bloody end.”

He opens his mouth, to deny it yet again-

Finds himself watching instead, fascinated, until Hannibal shrugs smoothly and steps further into the light. He moves, he thinks, like the tigers used to move – all smooth edges and sharp grace and the smell of death haunting around the claws. He moves like a weapon, more meat cleaver than man “…Why?”

Hannibal smiles, and the glint of his teeth is death. It is a good thing that he has resigned himself to such – he can stay and watch the spectacle, instead of shrinking back into the shadows and entirely unravelling, “because you do not know how to kill, not _yet_ -“

He waits, patiently.

“…But you do know people.”

He starts, a touch impatiently. Nobody has ever seen that he knows before, nobody has ever _known_. He suddenly wants everything, and nothing. He’s suddenly terrified, and more excited than he’s ever been. It’s a feeling akin to standing on the edge of a cliff, your toes digging in and your eyes fixed on the horizon – you feel like the wind could drag you over at any moment, and you don’t _care_ , “and how will that help?”

Hannibal smiles, again. It strikes him that he has never seen the man smile so often before. He does not know what it is to be flattered, so he dismisses it in favour of more important things, “you know people, and you absorb them. You start to become them, a thousand other faces in your head giving you traits that you never would’ve developed otherwise. You absorb their fears, their loves, their hates, their uncertainties-“

He tilts his head.

“-Their _skills_.”

He tilts his head back, uncertain.

…He tilts his head again, breathes, “and why would I want to do that?” in a way that is brittle light and hard strangeness mixed into one. He can feel his mind reaching out, trying to absorb, and for once he _doesn’t_ try to drag it back – Hannibal is fascinating to him, even with the thorns of darkness reaching steadily out.

And Hannibal is smiling, half-amused and half-hungry. He looks starving, _ravenous_. He looks like he wants to reach out, tear into his chest and eat his still-beating heart whole. He looks a little like a predator and a little like a lover and a little like something he can’t even put a name to, dark and hidden and fully prepared to devour him whole and consume his body and bones and breath entire, “because you could _win_ , Will. You could absorb Jack’s trick with the sword, Abigail’s cunning, Alana’s knowledge of survival. You could take and take and take until you were a super man, a terror of the field. You could slaughter those beneath you, those little ones not half of your worth, and reign supreme. You could be the victor.”

He stares for a moment, calm beneath his lashes, “I could win?”

Hannibal nods in return for a moment, equally calm with that smirk still curving his lips.

“Even against you?”

…And Hannibal _laughs_ , a delighted sound. It bounces off the sterile walls, echoes down the corridor until stopped still by pure terror. He laughs and laughs and laughs, and it sounds like the clash of weapons and the screech of a bereaved mother and the death howls of a thousand children. He laughs, and the world grows dark around them.

He waits it out, patiently. Keeps his place, studies Hannibal’s face, keeps his neck and shoulders relaxed and unafraid.

“We could be the last two.”

“And what then?” He tilts his head again, moves _himself_ a little closer to Hannibal. They’re closer than he’s been to another human for a while now – to any normal person it would be the intimacy of a friend, to him it’s practically the intimacy of a lover, “you kill me?”

Hannibal gives another chuckle, softer this time. It slips away, as if fleeing his terrible teeth – it does not, surprisingly, occur to him that to do the same would be an excellent idea, “we reign together, Will.”

“Impossible,” he shakes his head, gives a smile that is neither amused or mocking – a smile that just is, hanging between them like an involuntary twitch of the lips, “the capitol would never allow it, not two tributes. And if they did? Certainly not two male tributes, from different districts, fresh with the haze of victory in their eyes.”

“The capitol will allow whatever I wish.”

And he looks.

…And he _looks_.

Hannibal, this close, is not human. He is something of darkness and thorns, of blood and teeth. He is a beast wearing a pilfered human skin, but he is not sure what is wearing the beast. He’s something beyond the districts, beyond the capitol, beyond even the president controlling all their lives like a master above a giant board. He is beyond time, he is beyond space. He is beyond morals, he is beyond logic. He is _beyond_ , and he is _terrifying_.

“You’ve killed before,” comes out of his mouth, strangely fascinated by what lurks before him.

Hannibal only bows his head, pleased. He is a demon, beneath the beast, and possibly something even deeper than that. He is a force of nature, and the force of nature is always _blood_.

“You’re a monster,” he decides further, the fascination continuing and continuing and _flowering_.

…And Hannibal smiles.

And Hannibal grins.

And Hannibal steps forward, and lowers his head, and presses their mouths together in an act that looks like a kiss but can better be described as a blessing. It is the first intimate touch he has ever experienced from another being, he bears it without complaint and without fear.

“Yes,” Hannibal confirms when he steps back, and his eyes glint through the darkness with a calculated hunger. He is beast, he is demon, he is ruler and king and god clutching an axe with fingers of bone and heart of bitter ice. He is everything, he is nothing. He is… Beyond description entire, “but what are you, Will?”

And, for once, he does not know.

It’s _intoxicating_.


End file.
